Immersion cleaning devices are widely used in many different industries to clean and/or chemically treat a variety of manufactured products. For instance, immersion cleaning devices are widely used in machine shops to clean dirt, grease and other contaminants from used parts that are in need of repair. Furthermore, immersion cleaning devices are also commonly used to clean newly manufactured parts after a machining operation, wherein the machining operation contaminants the parts with residual machining oils, machine chips or other debris. An example of a typical immersion cleaning device can be found in U.S. Pat. No. 5,299,587 to Randall et al., entitled ROTATING AND RECIPROCATING IMMERSION CLEANING APPARATUS AND METHOD, assigned to Randall Manufacturing Company, the assignee herein.
Immersion cleaning devices operate by immersing contaminated parts into a cleaning solution. The contaminated parts and/or cleaning solution is then agitated to provide the needed cleaning action. The cleaning solution used within the immersion cleaning device is dependent upon what contaminant is to be removed from a particular object. Such solutions can be hydrocarbon based, however, due to environmental concerns, water-based solutions used in conjunction with detergents are typically used.
In a manufacturing environment, where it is desirable to clean a large number of parts at one time, parts are conventionally grouped into batches. A batch of parts is then entered into the immersion cleaning device where all the parts in the batch are cleaned simultaneously. Since immersion cleaning devices are used to clean a large variety of objects, such devices conventionally come equipped with wire mesh baskets or containers. These containers are sized to fit properly within the immersion cleaning device. The containers are filled with the batch of parts to be cleaned and is used to confine the movement of the parts during the cleaning procedure. The also allows multiple containers to be filled with batches of parts in advance, so that the containers can be quickly loaded and unloaded into the immersion cleaning device. Consequently, the amount of downtime experienced by the immersion cleaning device is reduced and more parts can be cleaned in a given period of time.
In many manufacturing applications, multiple immersion cleaning devices are placed in a line and are joined together with a common roller conveyor. In such a configuration, different machines in the line serve a different function. For example, in a bank of four machines, the first machine may soak a basket of parts in a solvent. The second machine may wash the basket of parts. The third machine may rinse the basket of parts and the fourth machine may be used to dry the basket of parts. In such a bank of machines, the basket of parts is typically manually moved from one machine to the other along the common conveyor that joins the various machines. This means that an operator must be standing near the bank of machines waiting for each machine to finish its cycle. The expense of such labor and the loss of time created by the operator's slow reaction time, significantly increased the overall cost of cleaning parts. Furthermore, operators are required to touch the basket of parts in order to move the basket from one machine to another. Often the baskets are wet with hazardous solvents or are too hot to be touched, causing a danger to the operator.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an automated device capable of selectively moving a basket of parts along a conveyor from one machine to another.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a device that moves a basket of parts from one machine to another without having to have an operator touch the basket of parts.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide an automated device that can be retroactively coupled to an existing bank of machines.